LeBron James nearly edges Michael Jordan for GOAT in player poll
22/04/2024 21:06
You can feel the tide beginning to turn. Like evolution, it’s slow and gradual, but make no mistake, it’s happening. The stranglehold that Michael Jordan has had on the title of Greatest Basketball Player of All-Time — one given to him by David Stern immediately before he announced his retirement for the first time in 1993 — had been considered unbreakable, but now, after 21 seasons of basketball brilliance from the man who was once a seventeen-year-old prodigy that was being touted as “The Chosen One,” the world appears to finally be ready to have the debate that was, in reality, inevitable all along: Is Michael Jordan or LeBron James the NBA’s GOAT?
Ask 133 current NBA players anonymously who they favor, and you’ll see that the distance between Michael Jordan and LeBron James has never been smaller.
“In this endless debate, His Airness has experienced serious slippage for the third consecutive poll,” write Sam Amick and Josh Robbins of The Athletic, who shared the results of the site’s annual Player Poll. “Jordan had a huge edge in 2019 (73 percent to LeBron's 11.9 percent) and was still nearly doubling him in 2023 (58.3 percent to 33 percent). Now the gap is only 3.8 percent.”
That’s right, within this very small, yet notable sample size of informed voters, here’s how things stand right now:
Michael Jordan – 45.9%
LeBron James – 42.1%
Twenty years ago, this was all beyond inconceivable. In fact, given how passionate MJ-stans are and how unwilling they have been historically to concede that anybody else could even be considered as a response to this prompt, I think it’s fair to say that it bordered on heresy. Shoot, less than ten years ago, to say otherwise meant you were living on the outskirts of reality. It was the equivalent of being a flat-earther or a member of QAnon. Now, as this poll shows, it’s fairly commonplace.
It’s very possible that whenever the long career of LeBron James has finally come to an end, the general consensus will be that LeBron was the superior player and had a superior career to Michael Jordan. But it feels like a fair assessment to make that nobody, not even LeBron, can match the legacy of MJ.
MJ seems to be above reproach, so much so that any critiques have been twisted in a way which adds to his legend. The stories of his gambling addiction and the hot water he found himself in because of it only highlights the fact that he was a cutthroat competitor who could never turn that switch off, whether it was on the golf course or at the card table or on the basketball court. We love him for it. Any mention of the fact that he never had to go through Bird or Magic at their peaks or that it took him four tries to get past the Detroit Pistons becomes a discussion about how he came up during a Golden Era of Basketball, and how he established himself as the best player in the league by the end of that era before dominating the 1990's because he had no peers.
On one hand, this set-up is fundamentally unfair to every post-MJ athlete because again, he is the bar they are striving for. The issue here is the system is rigged so that the bar can never be reached. On the other hand, I have to admit, it’s enjoyable to look at MJ (or any athlete for that matter) through these lenses sometimes. Even if it means that the picture is slightly distorted because no nits are being picked or even considered, I came to the conclusion that this is the benefit of the doubt that every transcendent athlete deserves from time to time.
Gushing quotes and anecdotes that sound like folklore and a couple of dozen moments and highlights will be the lens through which we observe Michael Jordan for the remainder of time, as brief as that may be. If it hasn't already happened, he'll eventually become as embedded in American culture as any single figure in the nearly 250-year history of the country. Even as some of the finer details start to blur, we will forever remember that MJ was the biggest sports and pop culture star of his time.
But just because all of this is true, that doesn’t mean that MJ is so far ahead that he can’t feel LeBron breathing down his neck.
It’s not a coincidence that, according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Jordan agreed for the footage that was eventually used in “The Last Dance” to be released on the day of the Cavaliers’ championship parade in 2016. Once again, it shines a spotlight on the kind of maniacal competitor that Michael Jordan is. Even eighteen years after his last game in the NBA Finals, he was still obsessed with vanquishing his foes and being the greatest to ever do it.
Just as obsessed as LeBron James has been in his pursuit of “The Ghost who played in Chicago.”
LeBron James’ climb to the top of the NBA was different than Michael Jordan’s, because it was both expected and unwelcome. Before he ever stepped on an NBA floor, LeBron James was declared the next transcendent basketball star by countless media outlets and sports analysts, which pissed a whole bunch of people off. The backlash was hyper-critical, and even veered toward hateful at times. The media coverage of the early portion of LeBron’s career was defined by hot-take reactions to his failures and short-comings, all in the name of protecting the God of the Church of MJ.
But at a certain point, the body of work for LeBron James began to outweigh the myth-making machine of Michael Jordan. Slowly and gradually, everything that people said LeBron couldn’t do, he started doing.
LeBron’s not a great scorer!
You’re right! All 40,474 of his career regular season points feel very fluky to me.
LeBron can’t win titles!
Remind me, how many championships has LeBron James won now? Not one. Not two. Not three. But four.
LeBron lost in the NBA Finals six times!
And that’s worse than being bounced in an earlier round of the Playoffs? Would you be kind enough to explain that one to me?
LeBron’s not clutch!
Can I interest you in an extended highlight reel of nearly every clutch moment LeBron James has had in the NBA Playoffs? Just a heads up, it’s gonna take you a while to get through, because he has more postseason game-winners than anybody else in NBA history.
The only thing the man hasn’t done is finish a game with a 27-7-7 stat line, even though those are his career averages.
The greatest compliment one could pay LeBron James is that I’m not sure what the defining characteristic of his career will be. LeBron’s statistical accomplishments will be easy to point to when making the GOAT case. By the numbers, he’s already statistically the league’s greatest player, and his long career isn’t yet finished. And yes, longevity should be part of the criteria for greatness. Why do we talk about the Roman Empire to this day? Because it stood for 1,000 years, that’s why! And because LeBron James has played at an incredibly high level for over two decades, it puts him in a spot where we can look at his statistical resume and allow our jaws to drop to the floor.
LeBron’s statistical ranks (Regular Season + Playoffs) – 1st in points (by over 4,000), 1st in win shares, 3rd in career wins, 4th in assists, 5th in steals, 5th in triple doubles, 6th in three-pointers, 21st in rebounds.
I don’t think I need to note that LeBron is the only player in league history to crack the top 25 in each of those statistical categories, but I’ll do it anyway: LeBron James is the only player in league history to crack the top 25 in each of those statistical categories.
For me though, even beyond the numbers, what defines LeBron James will be the eye-test, which put him in the GOAT conversation long before he had the career accolades to rightfully be there. I’ve never seen a player have such a command of the game from both a physical and mental standpoint. I mean, how does one of the most gifted athletes who ever lived also possess a supercomputer for a brain? Fundamentally, that seems like a glitch in the matrix. As Kanye West rapped before he lost his mind, “No one man should have all that power.”
From the time that I’ve been touting LeBron James as the greatest basketball player who ever lived — immediately following Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals — I did so while conceding one thing that I remain passionate about to this day… LeBron’s reign at the top of the NBA hierarchy will be temporary. It’s a borrowed title, because as I said before, while evolution may be slow and gradual, it’s still happening, and LeBron James (or Michael Jordan, or Kobe Bryant, or whoever you believe is the GOAT) will eventually be surpassed by Victor Wembanyama someone else. And Player X will eventually be surpassed by Player Y, and Player Y by Player Z, and so on.
Rather than getting angry about it, I suggest you just sit back and enjoy the ride. We’re the lucky ones who get to watch from a distance and witness greatness on a nightly basis.
Also, one final somewhat related side note: Who the hell did Paul Pierce bribe to get a vote in this category?
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